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Office, Paymaster General and the Minister for the Constitution and European Union joins
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me now. Lovely to see you this morning, Minister, on what I know is going to be a very busy
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week for you and your department. Tell me this, though, in a written question in September
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2024, you said, and I quote, we have no plans for an EU-wide youth mobility scheme and there
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will be no return to freedom of movement. In the same month, the Prime Minister also
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told reporters that he had, quotes, no plans for a youth mobility scheme. You have now got
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a plan for that. So were you lying or? So firstly, Camilla, it's very good to join you on your show as always. Always a pleasure
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on a Sunday morning. Before I just come to that specific point, just to say that I'm
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working very hard at the moment, right up to the wire to deliver for the United Kingdom
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and to try to deliver a deal tomorrow that's going to give us more secure borders
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that's going to give us lower house to hold bills, and is also going to be good for jobs, good for investment in the United Kingdom
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But I'm pleased to take a break out of that to come on to your show
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In relation to youth mobility specifically that you've asked me about, I've also said that we would be open to sensible EU proposals
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I've been saying that for some months. But firstly, we will not go back to freedom of movement
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And secondly, anything has to be consistent with the government's approach in the migration
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white paper last week to reduce the level of net migration. The level of net migration has been too high
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People have been telling us on the doorsteps it quadrupled between 2019 and 2023 to just under one million This government is committed to bringing the net migration figure down and that exactly what we will do
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But it is a form of free movement, isn't it? It's the free movement of European students
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and you had ruled it out in September. It isn't freedom of movement
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We have 13 existing youth mobility schemes. We've got a youth mobility scheme with Uruguay, for example
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Nobody suggests we've got freedom of movement. with Uruguay. I've said it has to be smart, it has to be controlled
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That absolutely isn't freedom of movement. And it will also give, by the way, opportunities
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for young people here in Britain to experience different cultures, to go abroad to work, to go abroad for study
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But that is just one aspect, Camilla. What we will be looking at today in these final hours
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is is this deal overall in the national interest, overall in the interests of the British people
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and we will only sign it if it does. Can you guarantee that no money is going to be handed back to Brussels
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There's some reports in the papers this morning that the French particularly are asking money for our participation
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in any defence and security pact. So we consider individual programmes on their own merits
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on the basis of value for money and what's in the UK interest. So, for example, the last government agreed to pay money
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into the Horizon and Copernicus programmes. Now, that clearly has benefit for the United Kingdom
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We supported it in opposition. I was at a project at Imperial College London, not too far from here, only a few weeks ago
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to see some real cutting edge research that keeps our university sector world leading
